Branches

by Sherwood Electronics Laboratories, Inc. (Mike Miller)
A full featured stand-alone software program that lets you view, manage, and organize your genealogy data in a modern graphical and database environment. Runs on Windows, Mac and iPad.

Branches Review by Arnold Chamove,
Oct 23, 2017

Rating

I’ve been using Branches since its inception. Until recently, it has done things no other program has done. (a) it can tell you the link between two distant people who have a convoluted link. (b) it tells you people who are unlinked to your tree.

It still does things no other program does. (a) it can bring up a simple editing screen showing a person, wife, parents and children in one simple uncluttered panel. (b) it allows you to easily and quickly fly though your tree looking at detail of a few of your branches or at a bigger picture showing many linked branches . (c) it allows one to look at a tree and prune clusters of individuals at one clip or detach a branch where one can see the whole branch at a glance (but see below for a caveat) and pruning has been improved in the last year; this means you can see the whole branch you are working with, no matter how big or convoluted. (d) it has many fewer options which means an uncluttered place to work. (e) the manager responds to emails rapidly.

It has one big flaw: Unlike some other programs, it only does a backup when you tell it to do so, and if you crash out of Branches, you lose all of what you have done prior to your last backup. When you use the Prune command, it is not unlikely that Branches will say it cannot do what you have asked, leap to a blank screen, and, when you reboot, all you had done prior to the crash is gone—gone baby, gone.

I still use Branches to fly through the branches and see where families spread their tentacles. It is cheap enough to use as an application. Easy to install.

Biggest Pro: Fly through the branches of your treeBiggest Con: No continuous backup.

Branches Review by Mike,
Mar 17, 2017

Rating

Upon attempting to run Setup for this program, both Windows 10 and my virus protection (Trend Micro) balked, and between them did not permit installation of this program. …. Now, why do you suppose that is, unless there is a problem… To be sure, an unspecified problem, and it may be real or it may be imagined, but there is a problem of some sort on somebodies part, and it appears too that the developer of this software needs to address that issue.

Biggest Pro: FeaturesBiggest Con: Installation

Branches Review by Paul S,
Oct 13, 2016

Rating

Wonderful way to view one’s tree. It zooms in and out like Google maps. It allows one to move freely and scan and to quickly go back far to a point and then return. Can zoom in for photos and other details. But, I would not use this as my main or only genealogy software. It does not come with all of the bells and whistles of other full featured programs.

Biggest Pro: Great and unique viewsBiggest Con: Not as full featured as others

Branches Review by Arnold Chamove,
Apr 1, 2016

Rating

I use Branches for three things in my big research tree (30k): finding the relationship between two people who are convolutedly connected, and pruning, and looking at similar surnames. Pruning is great in that you can see a whole limb of a tree and lop it off. But multiple pruning is tedious: it is like you cut off a limb/branch/person, climb down the tree, take a photo of the new tree (save and rename a copy), cut a new limb, climb down, save and rename, cut a new branch, etc. If you have more than several cuts to make, it is not worth the effort.
Similar names are easy to find and, in a big tree, is useful to follow up those similarities; but you can only mark one surname at a time and then that marking vanishes when you search a second surname.
But, if your tree is large, then it is hard to view at once, but much better than other programs which give very limited views of your tree. I use it as an Application for my main software.

Biggest Pro: Can see your whole tree at once.Biggest Con: Pruning is tedious

Branches Review by Aaron Peterson,
Jun 5, 2011

RatingNot Rated

Very easy to use. Because of the way it is designed you see your entire data at once and just need to zoom in for details. Extremely easy for management of data. You can prune branches out of your file and graph branches into your file. All information is on the screen including images as you zoom in.

Biggest Pro: View and Management of dataBiggest Con: Cumbersome when adding many individuals by typing them in

Branches Review by Phil Bursto,
Jun 9, 2010

Rating

This is a wonderful new piece of software. At first glance it might look a bit primitive but it is astonishingly useful. All your family tree data is available and visually presented on one screen, zooming in allows you to see images, sources, facts, siblings. The search function is the best I’ve seen - it will search for any word anywhere in your tree (including notes) and will visually represent them. So at a glance you can spot ‘not verifieds’ in your tree or find all the people from a particular parish. Just have a go with their 30 day free trial.

Biggest Pro: All your data visible and available all the time. Identifying missing data and tasks to do very easily,Biggest Con: None